Politicians Seeking Pro‐​Growth Tax Cuts to Lure Successful People Back to France

The International Herald Tribune reports on the tax-cut battle in France. The President and his Finance Minister are seeking to cut taxes and change the French attitude about wealth creation. In another sign that tax competition is a valuable tool for better policy, the articles explains that a key selling point is the need to make the country attractive once again to the numerous French tax exiles living and working in nations with lower tax rates:

In proposing a tax-cut law last week, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde bluntly advised the French people to abandon their "old national habit." …Citing Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," she said the French should work harder, earn more and be rewarded with lower taxes if they get rich. …The government's call to work is key to its ambitious campaign to revitalize the French economy by increasing both employment and consumer buying power. Somehow it hopes to persuade the French that it is in their interest to abandon what some commentators call a nationwide "laziness" and to work longer and harder, and maybe even get rich.
France's legally mandated 35-hour workweek gives workers a lot of leisure time but not necessarily the means to enjoy it. Taxes on high-wage earners are so burdensome that hordes have fled abroad. (Sarkozy cites the case of one of his stepdaughters, who works in an investment banking firm in
London.) In her National Assembly speech, Lagarde said that there should be no shame in personal wealth and that the country needed tax breaks to lure back the rich. "All these French bankers" working in London and "all these fiscal exiles" taking refuge from French taxes in Belgium "want one thing: to come back to France," she said. "To them, as well as to all our compatriots who are looking for the keys to fiscal paradise, we open our doors."